Going into Exile quiz
By Liam O'Flaherty
An island village dances all night in a crowded cabin, laughing loudly to hide what the morning will take from the Feeney family
27 questions · about 28 minutes
Questions and answers
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Question 1. Which literary genres best describe "Going into Exile"?
- Gothic Horror & Suspense
- Modernism & Stream of Consciousness
- Fable & Allegory
- Satire & Social Comedy
- Correct answer: Realism & Regional Fiction
Realism & Regional Fiction is the best fit. The story shows ordinary peasants in a real kind of place (a three-room cabin on a rocky Aran island) with exact detail: the turf fire, the raisin cake, the creels on the mare, the whitewashed walls. It is rooted in one region's way of life and its customs, such as the farewell party before emigration.
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Question 2. Where and when does "Going into Exile" take place?
- Correct answer: In a peasant's cabin on the island of Inverara, over one June night and morning
- On an emigrant steamer crossing the stormy Atlantic from Kilmurrage to Boston
- In a crowded Dublin tenement on the night before the Easter Rising of 1916
- In a Galway fishing village during a hungry winter of the Great Famine
The whole story happens in and around Patrick Feeney's cabin on the island of Inverara, from a 'starry June sky' at night to the 'hot June day' of the ending. Inverara is O'Flaherty's fictional name for Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands, where he was born. The story never follows the emigrants off the island: Kilmurrage, where they board the steamer, is only mentioned.
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Question 3. What is the dance in Patrick Feeney's cabin really for?
- A wedding party for Mary and Bartly Hernon, the boy who once kissed her
- A harvest dance marking the end of the island's potato-sowing season
- A wake for a neighbour who drowned when his curragh overturned at sea
- Correct answer: A farewell for Michael and Mary, who sail for America in the morning
The party is what the Irish called an 'American wake': a farewell held the night before someone emigrated. It was named after a wake for the dead because emigrants so rarely came home. That is why the guests dance 'with a certain forced and boisterous gaiety that failed to hide from them the real cause of their being there,' and why 'there was a haunting melancholy in the air.'
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Question 4. Why are Michael and Mary emigrating to the United States?
- They have been sent away in disgrace after Mary was caught with Bartly Hernon
- Correct answer: The family's small, rocky farm can offer them nothing but poverty and hard work
- Their father has arranged for both of them to marry into a wealthy Boston family
- They are fleeing arrest after Michael's part in a brawl at the Kilmurrage fair
They leave because the land cannot support them. Eight people share a three-room cabin, and Michael says bitterly, "Sure what did anybody ever get out of the land but poverty and hard work and potatoes and salt?" He plans to earn wages in Boston, Massachusetts, and pay back his Aunt Mary for the passage money; Mary is going 'to work as a servant or maybe in a factory.' Like thousands of young people from the west of Ireland, they emigrate for work, not adventure alone.
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Question 5. At the gable, what memory breaks through Patrick Feeney's small talk with his son?
- His own father's departure for America, which he watched as a small boy
- Michael's first fair day at Kilmurrage, when he sold the family's young pig
- Correct answer: The potato field Michael sowed alone last spring while his father had influenza
- The day Michael nearly drowned when his curragh overturned off the grey crags
After talking about the weather, Feeney remembers the potato field Michael sowed alone 'the time I had the influenza' and says, "It's a cruel world that takes you away from the land that God made you for." When Michael answers that the land gives only poverty, his father waves at the western sky and warns that in America "you'll be giving your sweat to some other man's land, or what's equal to it." It is the closest either man comes to saying what he feels.
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Question 6. Who lent the Feeneys the money to hold the farewell dance?
- Pat Mullaney, the musician
- Aunt Mary in America
- The local schoolmistress
- Correct answer: Their Uncle Ned
Michael tells his father, "It was kind of Uncle Ned to lend the money for the dance, father," and promises to send that money home with his very first wages, "even before I pay Aunt Mary for my passage money." Even a poor family felt it had to give its emigrants a proper send-off, 'just the same as everybody else has.' Pat Mullaney plays the accordion; the schoolmistress gave Mary her hat.
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Question 7. What does "Platitudes" mean in this story?
- Correct answer: Remarks repeated so often that they have lost their force or meaning
- Bold promises about the future, made to cheer up people who are grieving
- Bitter complaints about hardship, spoken aloud to anyone who will listen
- Short prayers recited to bless travellers before they set out on a journey
A platitude is a stale, overused remark that sounds wise but says nothing new. Mrs. Feeney offers the guests "What will be must be, and sure there is hope from the sea, but there is no hope from the grave," then breaks off: "Mrs. Feeney stopped suddenly, aware that all these platitudes meant nothing whatsoever." The word points to one of the story's themes: the familiar words people use cannot touch real grief.
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Question 8. How does Mrs. Feeney keep from crying through most of the night?
- She slips out to the gable alone, pretending to check on a sick young pig in the sty
- She drinks tea with the old men and talks of nothing but the island's news
- Correct answer: She keeps busy serving food, entertaining guests and doing small household tasks
- She stays in the corner by the fire and lets her daughters run the party
Mrs. Feeney fills the night with work: serving tea and raisin cake, urging the young men to eat, managing the party. O'Flaherty writes, "These little things, in a manner, saved her, for the moment at least, from bursting into tears." Whenever the real thought of her children going 'three thousand miles into a vast unknown world' reaches her, she feels an imaginary bar of hard metal behind her forehead and goes blank. It is her husband, not she, who slips out to the gable.
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Question 9. How do Mary's thoughts about America differ from Michael's?
- Both of them dread the journey and plan to come back to Inverara within a year
- Correct answer: Michael thinks of money and his strength; Mary of love, clothes and comfort
- Mary longs to see the sights of Boston, while Michael hopes to buy land in Galway
- Michael fears the hard work ahead, while Mary is eager to earn money for home
Michael tells himself 'that with his great strength he would earn a great deal of money,' and for a moment forgets the ache of leaving. Mary, by contrast, 'did not think of the work she was going to do or the money that she was going to earn.' She thinks of "love and of foreign men and of clothes and of houses where there were more than three rooms and where people ate meat every day," swinging between fear and longing.
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Question 10. What does Mary suddenly realize while watching her mother at the tea table?
- She notices that her mother is angry with her father for allowing the journey
- Correct answer: She glimpses her mother's life of hardship and hates herself for being selfish
- She sees that her mother is secretly relieved to have two fewer mouths to feed
- She realizes that her mother has always loved Michael far more than her
Mary sees in a flash "a life of continual misery and suffering, hard work, birth pangs, sickness and again hard work and hunger and anxiety." The glimpse makes her "hate herself as a cruel, heartless, lazy, selfish wretch" for thinking only of her own future. She offers to look after the table, but her mother refuses. The narrator does say Mrs. Feeney loves Michael most, but that is not what Mary realizes here.
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Question 11. What does "Ruminative" mean in this story?
- Bright with mischief, always quick to tease and laugh
- Red-rimmed and tearful after a long bout of crying
- Restless and darting, unable to settle on any one thing
- Correct answer: Deeply thoughtful, given to slow and quiet reflection
Ruminative means thoughtful or brooding, given to turning things over slowly in the mind (the word comes from the way a cow chews its cud). Mary's 'ruminative brown eyes' fit the girl who sits on the bed all night 'thinking feverishly of the United States, at one moment with fear and loathing, at the next with desire and longing.'
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Question 12. When Mrs. Feeney sobs once at the family tea table, how does she cover it up?
- Correct answer: She laughs it off as silliness about her little birds leaving the nest
- She blames the smoke from the turf fire for making her eyes water
- She claims a sudden pain in her swollen legs from standing all night
- She scolds the twins for spilling tea so that nobody notices her tears
After Michael scolds her, she says she was only thinking how nice it is to sit surrounded by her children, "all my little birds in my nest, and then two of them going to fly away made me sad." Then 'she laughed, pretending to treat it as a foolish joke.' The father quickly orders everyone to work 'as if it were an ordinary day.' Again, the family turns away from grief instead of speaking it.
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Question 13. While the family does the morning chores, how does their home look to Michael and Mary?
- It seems cold and strange, as though new tenants had already moved in there
- It looks smaller and meaner than ever, proving to them that they are right to go
- Correct answer: Its poverty suddenly seems like comfort and plenty, now that they no longer belong
- It looks just as it always has, because they have not yet really said goodbye
Michael and Mary sit about 'miserably conscious that they had cut adrift from the routine of their home life.' O'Flaherty adds, "Now that they were cut adrift from it, the poverty and sordidness of their home life appeared to them under the aspect of comfort and plenty." Only when they are about to lose it can they see what home was worth, which is the same feeling Michael later shows when he pockets the whitewash.
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Question 14. What finally breaks Mrs. Feeney's self-control?
- Correct answer: Watching Mary put on her first hat and seeing how beautiful she looks in it
- Hearing the women in the kitchen begin the traditional keen for emigrants
- Michael's announcement that he will never come back to Inverara again
- Seeing her husband load the luggage creels onto the mare in the yard
As Mary twists before the mirror in her new hat, her mother is seized by a strange rage: "for the moment she hated her daughter's beauty," fearing what that beauty might bring on her far from home. Then the anger vanishes 'like a puff of smoke' and she wails, "My children, oh, my children, far over the sea you will be carried from me, your mother." Only after this do the women in the kitchen take up the cry.
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Question 15. Who gave Mary the hat she puts on before leaving?
- Her mother, who bought it in a Kilmurrage shop
- Bartly Hernon, as a secret parting gift
- Her Aunt Mary, who sent it over from Boston
- Correct answer: The schoolmistress, who was very fond of her
The hat is the first Mary has ever worn. "It was given to her by the schoolmistress, who was very fond of her," and Mary took it in a little herself so that it fitted her beautifully. The detail shows her 'instinct for beauty in dress,' the very quality that makes her mother afraid for her.
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Question 16. What does "Sordidness" mean in this story?
- Lonely quiet of a remote and empty stretch of land
- Correct answer: Dirty, wretched squalor and meanness of living
- Warm closeness of the kind that binds a family together
- Strict order and discipline kept up in daily habits
Sordidness means squalor: dirty, wretched, mean conditions. O'Flaherty pairs it with poverty to describe the Feeneys' crowded cabin as Michael and Mary had always seen it, and then turns it around: once they are 'cut adrift' from that life, its 'poverty and sordidness' look to them like 'comfort and plenty.'
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Question 17. How does Patrick Feeney show that the moment of departure has come?
- He shouts at the wailing women to stop their noise and to open the cabin door at once
- He rings the bell on the mare's harness and calls the two of them out to the road
- Correct answer: He enters in his best clothes with holy water and says gently, 'Come now, it is time'
- He sends little Thomas in to tell them the steamer is already waiting at the pier
Feeney comes into the bedroom in his new frieze waistcoat, holding his hat and a bottle of holy water. "He coughed and said in a weak gentle voice that was strange to him," 'Come now, it is time.' He sprinkles Michael and Mary and they cross themselves. The man who hid behind loud jokes all night can only manage four quiet words and a blessing.
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Question 18. "As Michael was going out the door he picked a piece of loose whitewash from the wall and put it in his pocket." What does this gesture suggest?
- Correct answer: Beneath his talk of money, he wants to carry a small piece of home with him
- He is angry with the cabin and picks at the wall out of pure impatience
- He is superstitious and believes the flake will keep him safe at sea
- He means to show it in Boston as proof of just how poor his family's cabin was
The whitewash is the story's quietest symbol. It covers the walls of every island cabin, so a flake of it is a piece of home small enough to carry across the Atlantic. The gesture says what Michael could not say at the gable: under his talk of strength and wages he already feels the loss. It echoes his mother staring at her children's heads 'as if by the intensity of her stare she hoped to keep a living photograph of them before her mind.'
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Question 19. When Mrs. Feeney runs into the yard screaming "come back to me," what does she find?
- The whole village waiting at the gate to walk her down to Kilmurrage
- Her husband returning alone to say the steamer had already sailed
- Correct answer: A crooked limestone road under the hot sun, with nobody in sight to answer
- Michael running back up the road to embrace her one last time before leaving
"There was a crooked stretch of limestone road, surrounded by grey crags that were scorched by the sun." The road ends in a hill and drops out of sight; the June day is silent. Listening for an answering cry, she imagines she hears the crags simmering in the heat, but 'It was something in her head that was singing.' The empty road is the story's final image of loss.
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Question 20. The story ends with the old women saying "There is nothing that time will not cure" and "Time and patience." How does this ending work?
- It promises the reader that Michael and Mary will soon come home from Boston
- Correct answer: It is a thin, familiar comfort set against a grief the story shows to be immense
- It shows that Mrs. Feeney has already accepted her loss and is fully at peace
- It reveals that the two old women secretly resent the Feeneys' noisy party
Like Mrs. Feeney's own platitudes earlier in the night, the old women's sayings are well meant but small. O'Flaherty adds no comment; he simply lets 'Time and patience' stand after the screaming mother and the empty road. The quiet gap between the comfort offered and the loss we have just watched is what gives the ending its force. Nothing suggests the children will return, and the mother is anything but at peace.
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Question 21. What does "Impudent" mean in this story?
- Shy and awkward in front of other people
- Proudly vain about one's own appearance
- Gloomy, sullen and quick to take offence
- Correct answer: Rudely bold and lacking proper respect
Impudent means cheeky or disrespectful. When Michael begs him not to weaken, Feeney answers with 'pretended gruffness': "I'm afraid that your new clothes make you impudent." The joke lets him hide his emotion behind a father's mock scolding. The women use the noun too, teasing old Patsy Coyne that he has 'too much impudence.'
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Question 22. The neighbours follow the emigrants out "like a funeral procession." What theme does this simile reinforce?
- The island priest disapproves of emigration and treats emigrants as lost souls
- Correct answer: Emigration is a kind of death for the family left behind, a parting forever
- The villagers secretly envy the Feeneys for being able to afford two passages
- Michael and Mary will probably die at sea before they ever reach America
"The people filed out after them, down the yard and on to the road, like a funeral procession." The farewell party works like a wake, the women keen and rock with their aprons over their heads, and the mother is left in a 'tearless stupor.' O'Flaherty never shows Boston; his subject is the cost of emigration for those who stay, who mourn the living as if they had died.
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Question 23. What does the scene at the gable suggest about how the Feeneys handle deep feeling?
- They feel little real grief and treat the parting as a practical matter only
- They use anger and blame to hide their relief that the parting is so near
- They speak openly and at length about how much they will miss each other
- Correct answer: Their deepest feelings stay unspoken; they talk of weather and money instead
Father and son talk about the warm day, Uncle Ned's loan and the potato field, then stand five minutes in silence. "But they stood silent and sombre, like nature about them, hugging their woe." Throughout the story, words fail: Feeney jokes, his wife repeats platitudes and laughs off her sob, and real feeling comes out only as a lump in the throat, silence or the wordless keen.
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Question 24. The story opens with a jig, an accordion and singing, yet "there was a haunting melancholy in the air." Which device does this opening best show?
- Correct answer: Contrast, because forced gaiety is set against the grief and stillness around it
- Foreshadowing, because the noisy dance hints that a fight will break out by dawn
- Dramatic irony, because the reader knows the children will die but the family does not
- Flashback, because the dance interrupts the story to recall a happier time
The story is built on contrast. Inside, couples dance and the accordion plays; outside, 'There was a deep, calm silence outside the cabin' over 'shadowy grey crags.' The guests' 'forced and boisterous gaiety' is set against the grief it is meant to hide, and the father's loud jokes against his lonely visits to the gable. No fight breaks out, nobody dies, and the story is told in order without flashbacks.
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Question 25. Which point of view does O'Flaherty use to tell "Going into Exile"?
- First person, told by Michael as he remembers the night years later in Boston
- Third-person limited, staying inside Mary's mind from beginning to end
- Correct answer: Third-person omniscient, moving between the minds of the parents and children
- Second person, addressing the reader as though they were one of the emigrants
An all-knowing (omniscient) third-person narrator moves from Patrick Feeney's 'vague and peculiar ideas' at the gable, to Michael's dreams of Boston, to Mary's mixed fear and longing, to Mrs. Feeney's imaginary 'bar of some hard metal.' Because we see inside every mind, we know what each character feels and cannot say, so the reader sees the same parting from four angles.
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Question 26. Which of these events actually happened in the story?
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Patrick Feeney keeps leaving the dance, pretending to check on a sick young pig.
Happened
He leaves the kitchen "under the pretence of going to the pigsty to look at a young pig that was supposed to be ill," but really stands at the gable looking at the stars with a lump in his throat.
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Mrs. Feeney tells the guests she is glad her children are going to a better life.
Didn't happen
She never says she is glad. She offers sayings such as 'What will be must be' and 'there is hope from the sea, but there is no hope from the grave,' then stops, aware they mean nothing.
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Mary is a little afraid of her father because he once whipped her with a willow rod.
Happened
The winter before, "he had whipped her with a dried willow rod" after catching her behind Tim Hernon's cabin with Bartly Hernon's arms around her. Ever since, she shivers when her father touches her or speaks to her.
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Everyone in the family has an egg for breakfast in honour of the occasion.
Happened
"Everybody had an egg for breakfast in honour of the occasion." Mrs. Feeney tries to give hers to Michael and then to Mary, eats a little, and gives the rest to little Thomas.
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Little Thomas walks with the emigrants to Kilmurrage to see the steamer off.
Didn't happen
Thomas stays at home. Michael and Mary each kiss him hurriedly, since he is 'not going to Kilmurrage,' and he is left in the cabin with his mother and two old women.
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Michael and Mary look back at their mother as they leave the room.
Didn't happen
They leave 'without looking at their mother, who lay in the chair with her hands clasped on her lap, looking at the ground in a silent tearless stupor.'
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Michael's mongrel dog begins to howl when the women start wailing.
Happened
As the women's cry fills the cabin, "Michael's mongrel dog began to howl on the hearth," and little Thomas sits beside it and cries without knowing exactly why.
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Question 27. In which collection did "Going into Exile" first appear, and what real place is Inverara based on?
- Correct answer: Spring Sowing (1924); Inverara stands for Inishmore in the Aran Islands
- The Tent (1926); Inverara stands for Valentia Island off the coast of Kerry
- The Mountain Tavern (1929); Inverara stands for Achill Island in County Mayo
- Two Lovely Beasts (1948); Inverara stands for Tory Island off Donegal
"Going into Exile" appeared in Spring Sowing (London: Jonathan Cape, 1924), O'Flaherty's first collection of stories. Inverara is his fictional name for Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands off Galway, where he was born in 1896; the island port of Kilmurrage stands for Kilronan, from which steamers crossed to the mainland. Several other stories in the collection are set on the same island.
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